Zuffa may have robbed you of $45 last weekend, but they’re making it up to us with a stacked-to-death WEC card on free TV, on a damn weeknight. Gotta love it. Will Jose Aldo continue his Sherman’s March through the featherweight division, or will Manny Gamburyan let everyone know who he is, bro? Will Jamie Varner and Donald Cerrone settle their feud once and for all? Will Miguel Torres and Mike Brown return to old form? Can the Korean Zombie possibly top his last performance against Leonard Garcia? All these questions will be answered after the jump starting at 9 p.m., as we present our liveblog of WEC 51: Aldo vs. Gamburyan. If you love organized violence, give us a "hell yeah" in the comments section…

When Miguel Torres’ longtime mentor and teacher, Carlson Gracie passed away in 2006, his protegee soon after ventured out on his own to open his own gym where he would train himself and a handful of up-and-coming fighters in Hammond, Indiana.

For a few years, the system seemed to be working as he continued to rack up wins and dominate all comers in the WEC.

Then, it happened on August 9, 2009.

After logging three strong minutes in the first round of his fourth title defense, Torres got floored by the right hand of challenger Brian Bowles and was knocked out by the follow-up barrage of ground-and-pound as he worked to secure an armbar.

Shaking off the loss, Torres figured spending more time training in the gym would get him back on track.

Potato Nation, assemble: Since tonight’s WEC event promises to be a card-of-the-year candidate, we’ll be liveblogging all the action starting at 9 p.m. eastern. So if you don’t have Versus, or you just feel like hanging out, come back to CagePotato.com tonight and join the conversation. After the jump: Results from yesterday’s Aldo vs. Gamburyan weigh-ins, and a must-see video feature on Miguel Torres‘s new day job.

Rather than sit through Franklin McNeil pretending he knows what he’s talking about for 30 minutes during the above video of last night’s episode of MMA Live, fast forward to the 10:14 mark and watch Chael Sonnen take the boxing analyst-turned-on-air MMA Wikipedia fact reader to task for his biased and bad question.

Sonnen’s verbal mastery was on point from his opening reply, when asked if his "trash talk" is real or if he’s just saying what he has to try to get into Anderson Silva’s head prior to their rapidly approaching UFC 117 showdown.

"First off, I haven’t talked any trash about [Anderson]. I haven’t said anything I’ve apologized for and I certainly haven’t said anything that wasn’t true. And secondly, who cares about Anderson’s head? He pretends he doesn’t understand anyway. I don’t care about Anderson’s head."

(Miguel may have lost a pint of blood, but he *gained* a pint of valuable life experience. / Photo courtesy of Sherdog.)

There was a time when Miguel Torres looked absolutely untouchable in the WEC bantamweight division. But after two consecutive stoppage losses to Brian Bowles and Joseph Benavidez, the former champion finds himself in an odd position — in the middle of the 135-pound pack, fighting up the ladder like everybody else. Torres will return to competition at WEC 51 (September 30th; Broomfield, Colorado) against Charlie Valencia, who is 5-3 in the WEC and has picked up three-straight decision victories against Seth Dikun, Coty Wheeler, and Akitoshi Tamura. Not a bad resume, but Torres doesn’t plan on adding his name to it. In fact, he’s already planning to, well, return to the old Miguel. As he tells MMA Fighting:

In an interview with ProMMARadio this weekend, former WEC featherweight champion Urijah Faber confirmed that he will be dropping down to bantamweight to test the 135-pound waters.

“From the sound of things, they want me to go down to 35. It’s something I’ve wanted to do for a long time — go down and have some fights down there. So, I’ll probably have a couple of fights down there and maybe go back up to 45; we’re not real sure yet."

You know whose job I don’t envy? Well, pretty much anyone who has to actually do stuff for a living rather than just write about stuff. Honestly, I don’t know where you people find the energy. But more specifically, it occurs to me that the photographer who does these before and after shots of fighters that were posted to the UFC website has a deceptively tough gig.

Taking the actual picture seems easy enough, sure, but in order to get to that point he has to ask the fighter to take a second and pose for it. When he asks before the bout, the fighter is brimming with confidence fiery optimism. But afterwards? Particularly after he’s suffered what is most likely a career-ending defeat? That’s the last time I’d want to walk up to him with that camera in my hand and say, ‘Do you have a second, Jens?’

Once you’ve become numb to the desperation and vulnerability in Jens Pulver’s eyes and find yourself craving more of other people’s pain, continue on after the jump to see Miguel Torres trying to keep cool even as blood from an enormous gash trickles down his face.

To the general public, March 6th seemed like any other Saturday. But for those of us who watched WEC 47, it was Opposite Day. Miguel Torres fought without his usual aggression and paid the ultimate price. Brian Bowles got absolutely clowned by Dominick Cruz and became the first fighter to be stopped by Cruz in the WEC. Stoppages outscored decisions, 8-3. The Fight of the Night went to a split freakin’ draw.

As you can imagine, few of us did well in our MMA FightPicker pools. Even our great leader Aaron Rampey didn’t win first place in any of his, though he did manage to tack on 112 chips to his grand total, and still sits comfortably in first place. This seems like a good time to mention that I, BG, tied with Rampey in our Contender Pool, while BF failed about as hard as we all figured he would. Surf_Finland won our pool (congrats!), which helped him move to the #2 spot in FightPicker’s current Top 5:

Yeah, that’s a bad one. In the co-main event of WEC 47 on Saturday, Joseph Benavidez struck a gusher on Miguel Torres‘s forehead before finishing him with a guillotine choke in the second round. Now, the former bantamweight champ will have a very prominent scar to remind him of the ugly loss. So what happened? Is Torres slipping, or was he undefeated for so long just because he never faced opponents as dangerous as Benavidez and Brian Bowles? Your thoughts, please.

(Looks like someone deserves a lollipop for being such a brave boy. Photo courtesy of Brian Bowles‘s Twitter.)

Fans were treated to a night of upsets at WEC 47, as favorites Brian Bowles and Miguel Torres both went down to unceremonious defeats in Columbus, Ohio. As you see in the above photo, Bowles wasn’t kidding about that injured hand. He claims to have broken it on the very first punch he landed, which then threw his whole game off and eventually prompted him to relinquish his title when he couldn’t continue past round two. That makes Dominick Cruz your new 135-pound champ, and the way the title’s been bouncing around lately he better get all the enjoyment he can out of it while it lasts.